Nixpkgs: When linux kernel 4.4 end of support scheduled in NixOS?

[volth]

My question is triggered by removal of linux kernel 4.1 and multiple hardware issues with 4.9 and later kernels, so I am using 4.4.

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When do you plan to remove kernel 4.4 ?

Upstream (kernel.org) plans to stop its support in Feb, 2018.
If NixOS follows there will be no kernel 4.4 in the next 18.03 version (or even earlier, 4.1 was removed four months before upstream's EOL which is Sep, 2017)

On the other hand, Canonical plans to support kernel 4.4 until Apr, 2021

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[vcunat]

I see no reason to force its removal as long as it's maintained, especially if some NixOS users still want it.

[7c6f434c]

Does Canonical version include any unexpected patches? If we plan to use them as upstream, maybe we should provide linux_4_4_ubuntu now to learn about the pitfalls?

I don't know if hardware support regressions in 4.9 are forever — Linux as a project is not the most regression-happy one, so maybe a detailed enough bug report could lead to a boot option for the old behaviour for most of the problems (or maybe even a proper fix).

[domenkozar]

We will remove it at Feb 2018. We are following kernel.org as we are using those kernels.

[Mic92]

@volth on which mailing-list was the patch of @dezgeg posted? Did it get feedback? Sometimes it is worth to try a different one from my experience, if it receives no attention.

[Mic92]

@volth If you do not apply kernel security updates (in 2-5 years), you do not have to care about kernel deprecations, I guess.

[Mic92]

You can always import your kernel from an older nixpkgs channel, if you need to. But ubuntu kernels might be also good idea, in this case we would also need to look at the infrastructure around that (kmod-blacklist-ubuntu).

[dezgeg]

@volth do you have a recollection of which kernel versions had working and which versions had broken nested KVM, and how did it break? Some time ago (+1 year) ago I (and other users) at $work tried nested KVM under various hypervisors (big iron VMWare and VirtualBox) and distro host kernels (Debian, Ubuntu) with various levels of failure (some had 100% reproducible boot failures with random stack traces, some had just random segfaults in userspace & random bluescreens in Windows). If you have some findings on mainline/stable kernels it might be useful to report/complain about upstream.

[volth]

kvm_intel module fails not load.
I suspect the reason could be in kernel-4.4 used on the host machine (on cloud hostings it is out of my control)

[volth]

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/27930

[globin]

Since EOL is in February which is in the next release support period, it will be removed in 17.09

[volth]

February is also EOL for 17.09, in March there will be 18.03, right?
Also removal of 4.4 depends on https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/27930 fix, or it would destroy some Hydra builds.

[globin]

We are supporting 17.09 until April 30th 2018

[globin]

3.10 and 4.4 have now been removed from master.